Smoke Signals: Women, Smoking and Visual Culture

Description

Every year, thousands of women attempt to kick their smoking habit because it is an unhealthy, expensive addiction. And every year, thousands do not quit because of nicotine cravings and because smoking has an image which is almost as addictive as the cigarette itself. It is seductive and alluring - but where does this image come from, and has it always been so deadly? In Smoke Signals, Tinkler charts women's changing relationship to tobacco from the 1880s to the 1980s, during which time smoking transformed from a male practice to one enjoyed by both sexes. Focusing on the feminization of cigarette smoking, the author unravels the role of visual culture and the impact of social, economic, medical and technological changes. Drawing on women's own photographs, alongside images from magazines, newspapers, television and film, this book provides a detailed and stimulating exploration of the role of visual culture in the history of women and smoking.

Penny Tinkler is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester.

'One of the great conundrums of modern cultural history is why there has been a dramatic decline in the number of men smoking but not of women. In what is the first in-depth, systematic study of the relationship between women, smoking and visual culture in Britain, Penny Tinkler tackles this conundrum head-on. Drawing on a rich range of photographs, advertisements, magazines and films, she persuasively exposes the power and persistence of the link between smoking, femininity, modernity, sexuality and glamour. This authoritative, wide-ranging and vividly readable book is a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the continuing appeal of the cigarette to British women from the nineteenth century to the present day.' Jeffrey Richards, Lancaster University 'This sophisticated, convincing analysis shows how films, ads, and magazines linked cigarettes to modern, emancipated womanhood, contributing to the immense 20th-century increase in female smokers. A clear, well-organized, important text with great illustrations.' Bonnie S. Anderson, City University of New York ' "New Women" of the 1890s were represented as flaunting cigarettes alongside their "Advanced Views." Over most of the next century a mass of visual imagery persuaded women that it looked good to smoke. Penny Tinkler's important historical study helps us to understand the relationships between images, feminine identities and social change.' Carol Dyhouse, University of Sussex 'More than a straightforward social history of smoking, this detailed and original work shows how ideas about femininity, modern sexuality and respectability can be illuminated by examining one specific cultural phenomenon - in this instance cigarette smoking.' Judy Giles, York St John University College